While the winter weather has been a contributing factor to the visual impact of the Hydro One clear-cut over the past two months, local residents and Ward 1 Coun. Scott Witmer believe the real visual impact will be seen in the spring when leaves and other vegetation fail to return to the corridor.

Before and after

By James Jackson, Chronicle staff

Twenty homes near a hydro corridor in the Beechwood neighbourhood have seen their trees and hedges spared thanks to an amended license agreement between Waterloo and Hydro One.

The city reached the agreement in principle in November and council passed the amendment last week.

Residents living near the corridor are happy the city managed to spare a few of the trees from the now-completed Hydro One clear-cut, but wish more could have been done to save trees along the popular walking trail.

The utility agreed to spare more than 30 trees and hedges near the edge of the Keats Way corridor when the city agreed to have them trimmed. Residents have been fighting the cut since June.

Poldi Tuka, who lives at 136 Woodbend Cres., had three trees spared as part of the agreement — a white mulberry, a crab apple and a cedar.

“It’s not only good for me, but for the neighbourhood and for nature,” he said.

While Tuka and 11 other homes on his street had trees and hedges spared, much of the corridor was clear-cut by Hydro One in November as part of its ongoing

maintenance regimen.

Hydro One had initially planned to cut down all the vegetation, but the city reached a last-minute deal to save some of the fringe trees by agreeing to hire a third-party contractor to trim them.

“Some of (my neighbours) were happy, but others were really upset,” said Tuka of the neighbourhood’s reaction to only some of the trees being saved.

The trees on his property have a special spot in his heart, he said. He has lived in the same house for about 30 years and planted the trees about 20 years ago.

He said he enjoys watching his three grandchildren, who range in age from 6 years to three months, as they play in the yard and he hopes when they grow a little older they will learn the important role trees play in nature.

Hydro One provided the list of trees and hedges to the city and trimmed them during the clear-cut, meaning it will be about three years before they will need to be trimmed again. The city estimates it will cost about $5,000 to have the work done.

The city said its own crews were not trained to work around the 115-kilovolt power lines. The contractor who will do the work has yet to be hired.

“We were waiting for the agreement to be finalized before we started searching,” said John Stewart, manager of forestry and horticulture at the city.

Coun. Scott Witmer said community reaction was mixed and suggested residents may get even angrier in the spring.

“People will really notice when the leaves are back on the trees and they see just how barren it is.”

The trail is used for a wide range of activities throughout the year, from jogging and cross-country skiing to enhance lessons about nature at the local elementary school.

Witmer said he and others may look elsewhere now for those activities since the trees and hedges offered outdoors enthusiasts with the feeling of escaping the city.

“I’ll still use the trail but will I look for other places to bike? Definitely,” he said.

The next step is to work with Hydro One to find a suitable ground-cover mixture of seed to replace the barren landscape, as well as provide residents with more information on what they can and cannot plant in their backyards to try and provide them with a little more privacy.

Witmer also said he would be willing to support a resolution from either Waterloo council or another municipality that would call on the provincial government to amend the way Hydro One goes about its business of clearing urban hydro corridors.

“I suspect other municipalities have had a similar experience,” he said.

Hydro One announced its plan to perform vegetation maintenance in the corridor last June and local residents fought the proposed clear-cut until the middle of November. They even appealed to city council for help.

The city did manage to overturn the utility’s plan to use chemical herbicide in the corridor, but could not stop their plan to mechanically remove the trees, shrubs and other vegetation using grinders and backhoes.

Hydro One said the work was necessary to maintain a safe and reliable source of power in the line, which supplies power to almost 20,000 residents from Waterloo to Palmerston.

Tuka will continue to enjoy the trees that the city and Hydro One agreed to spare and he doesn’t hold a grudge against the company.

“I understand they were looking after their own interests,” he said.

But he hopes in the future, foresters at Hydro One will not resort to such heavy-handed tactics.

“Everyone is sometimes quick to react (to a problem) by saying ‘Let’s just cut everything down,’” he said.